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In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the NSA in illegal wiretapping.  Most of us have wondered what happened to change the minds of 94 Democrats.  What happened between June 20 and March 14 to change 94 Democratic hearts and minds?

The answer might well be simple:  money.  Could it be that simple?

[..]

Here’s the bottom line:

Verizon,  AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:

$8,359  to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for  Telcos (116 Dems)

88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems
of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint
during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008).  ( MAPLight.org)

Of course the average amount received is a bit misleading.  A few of the very prominent Dems who changed their votes took a lot more than $8000.

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The National Security Agency does not need to tell lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees whether their phones were tapped as part of the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

The NSA has refused to say whether it listened in on the conversations of the lawyers who are advising detainees being held at the U.S. naval facility in Cuba. The NSA says even confirming the existence of such wiretaps would jeopardize national security.

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A couple years back, there was an apparent public outrage over the infamous Hot Coffee mod which could be found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The scene, which was the result of some code that had been cut from the final version of the game but not deleted entirely, allowed players to perform sexual acts with an NPC in one specific instance. The incident sparked a firestorm of debate, as well as a class action lawsuit in which Take-Two agreed to pay between $5 and $35 to anyone who had purchased the game and been offended.

Now, well after the fact, both the plaintiffs in the case and Take-Two itself are somewhat shocked that, in spite of millions of individuals having the right to a payout, only 2,676 people have come forward to claim their money. Seth Lesser, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs said that he is “disappointed” by the outcome, and doesn’t understand why so many people don’t care.

So here’s a video game where you can regenerate health with the services of a prostitute, kill her when she gets out of the car, take your money back, kill a cop and steal his cop car, kill national guard members and steal their tank, and you’re surprised so few people are offended by a little nookie in it?

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The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

LA-LA-LA-LA-I-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU-LA-LA-LA

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New analysis of Mars’ terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor have provided detailed information about the elevations and gravity of the Red Planet’s northern and southern hemispheres. A new study using this information may solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system: why does Mars have two strikingly different kinds of terrain in its northern and southern hemispheres? The huge crater is creating intense scientific interest.

[..]

giant northern basin that covers about 40 percent of Mars’ surface, sometimes called the Borealis basin, is the remains of a colossal impact early in the solar system’s formation, the new analysis suggests. At 5,300 miles across, it is about four times wider than the next-biggest impact basin known, the Hellas basin on southern Mars. An accompanying report calculates that the impacting object that produced the Borealis basin must have been about 1,200 miles across. That’s larger than Pluto.

“This is an impressive result that has implications not only for the evolution of early Mars, but also for early Earth’s formation,” said Michael Meyer, the Mars chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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The publication of a scientific paper by Radboud University that discusses design flaws of the MIFARE chip in cards such as the Oyster travelcard may be in jeopardy. Dutch secretary of state Tineke Huizinga has urged the university not to publish any secrets that may lead to abuse.

Last week researchers from Radboud University in Nijmegen revealed they had cracked and cloned London’s Oyster travel card. Earlier this year the researchers did the same to the Dutch MIFARE travel card. As a result, the introduction of the €1bn transport payment system in the Netherlands has now been postponed.

The Dutch researchers were planning to publish their scientific paper, appropriately named Dismantling MIFARE Classic, at the European Computer Security Conference Esorics in October, but secretary of state Huizinga has called upon the university to exercise responsibility.

These days “responsibility” apparently means “don’t embarrass the politicians”… the Uni is best of releasing it as soon as possible – otherwise when the next person cracks it (pretty soon now that it is known that it is possible) the Uni will be blamed for leaking the information anyway. The choice is between getting blamed for taking a principled stand, or getting blamed for leaking they didn’t do.

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North Carolina will do just about anything to keep technology companies happy, including offering IBM up to $750,000 to bring just 10 jobs to the state.

IBM has revealed plans to construct a $362m so-called “leadership data center” in either North Carolina, New York or Colorado. Hoping to secure this center, Durham County officials in North Carolina have just committed to a seven-year, $750,000 incentive package for IBM. That’s just chump change in the big scheme of things, but we’re sure IBM appreciates the effort.

You might think a $362m data plant would provide a lot of work for locals. But that’s not the case. IBM thinks the new facility will only require about 10 staff.

[..]

And companies such as Google and Microsoft also receive perks to build their new centers with taxpayers in various states around the US agreeing to major breaks around power consumption costs. That’s quite handy for the likes of Google and Microsoft, since they’re so strapped for cash and battling it out with rivals in low-margin businesses where just a few nickels can be the difference between maintaining a monopoly and going bust.

Anyway, the Durham folks justify the IBM package by saying that 1,000 or so executives will visit the new data center every year and spend money at hotels, restaurants, bars and strip clubs.

Ten employees being meddled with by 1000 execs per year? That’s 20 execs visiting per week all expecting meetings and PowerPoints and other general ego-fluffing.

Let’s hope they spend all their time at the strip clubs and golf courses otherwise those 10 poor bastards won’t get any work done.

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The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters.

(more pictures at the link)

George Carlin is dead. Here’s how he thought about religion:

And the ten commandments:

So how do cartoonists respond to his death? Yep:

And here’s how they could had responded:

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Blog readers don’t click on ads. Most ads are clicked by confused, lost, nontechnical people who arrived from a Google results page and think that the ad will take them to what they were really looking for. (This is why domain-squatting with ad pages is so profitable.) Many blogs have disabled ads for everyone except Google referrals without losing significant income. Many others have started showing more ads to Google referrals.

(there’s more, all true)

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Pratt & Whitney has spent the better part of two decades developing the geared turbofan engine that burns 12 to 15 percent less fuel than other jet engines and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 1,500 tons per plane per year. It’s being called one of the most exciting developments commercial aviation has seen in years, and it was a hot topic at the Eco-Aviation Conference, where the aviation industry spent two days charting the course to a greener future.

[..]

That’s why Pratt & Whitney has so much to brag about with its geared turbofan, which significantly advances jet-engine technology. Current jet engines have fans that suck air into the combustion chamber, where it is compressed, mixed with fuel, and ignited. Then it’s blown through a turbine, generating thrust. It works, but it’s inefficient because the fan is connected to the engine and turns at the same speed as the turbine. Fans work best at low speed, while turbines work best at high speed.

Pratt & Whitney solved that problem with a gearbox that lets the fan and turbine spin independently. The fan is larger and it spins at one-third the speed of the turbine, creating a quieter, more powerful engine the company says requires less fuel, emits less C02 and costs 30 percent less to maintain. Pratt & Whitney has been torture-testing the engines, and its engineers have simulated more than 40,000 takeoffs and landings.

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Senator Ted Kennedy is putting forward a brave face following his recent surgery but the sad reality remains. Even with successful surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy treatment, gliomas — a highly aggressive form of brain cancer that strikes approximately 10,000 Americans annually — tragically claim the lives of 75 percent of its victims within two years and virtually all within five years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells intact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the questions posed above are not entirely hypothetical.

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ormer Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned on Tuesday the U.S. economy was on the brink of a recession, with the chances of that happening at more than 50 percent.

In other news, pregnant women are on the brink of losing their virginity.

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Dear Professor Lenski,

Skepticism has been expressed on Conservapedia about your claims, and the significance of your claims, that E. Coli bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study.

The reply prof Lenski sends them is a great one!

The Website Is Down

[Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., on telecom immunity:]

“I’m not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I’m sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do,” Bond said.

Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!

And to think it was a Republican president (Reagan) that said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.”

Thanks, Jim!

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Automated passenger profiling is rubbish, the Home Office has conceded in an amusing – and we presume inadvertent – blurt. “Attempts at automated profiling have been used in trial operations [at UK ports of entry] and has proved [sic] that the systems and technology available are of limited use,” says home secretary Jacqui Smith in her response to Lord Carlile’s latest terror legislation review.

Furthermore, when the security services stopped trying to let the machines figure out who was a threat and went back to traditional “inituitive” stops, they were more effective. “Intelligence improved during the trials when officers reverted to the traditional intuitive methods, albeit applied in the context of intelligence provided by the security service,” says Smith. “It is likely that with more effective use of intelligence, and possibly some behavioural analysis training the quality of intelligence retrieved from persons of interest will improve and the number of people stopped will decrease.”

The Home Office’s belated discovery that human beings acting on sound intelligence make for better policing does however raise questions about the future operation of its E-Borders programme. This is intended to track people in and out of the country, and to operate in conjunction with Advanced Passenger Data (API) and Passenger Name Records (PNR) collected via Project Semaphore. As Home Office minister Joan Ryan told Parliament in March of last year, “In January 2007 23 successes were recorded by Project Semaphore as a result of automated profiling based on passenger data.”

23. Out of how many thousands of travelers profiled they dare not say, nor do they say how many of those 23 were for unpaid parking tickets and the like.

Yep, crap alright.

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The UK’s streets are today a safer place for kiddies and decorated war veterans after public and police hostility forced a Gloucestershire bus-spotter to give up his lifelong hobby of snapping interesting examples of road-based public transport, the Evening Standard reports.

Rob McCaffrey, 50, had apparently over 40 years built up an impressive 30,000 pics of buses, coaches and trams from across the globe, but has now put the lens cap on for good because he “keeps being mistaken for a terrorist and paedophile”.

He explained: “Since the 9/11 attacks there has been a crackdown on security and it seems everyone with a camera is now regarded as a potential criminal. The past two years have absolutely been the worst. I have had the most appalling abuse from the public, drivers and police over-exercising their authority.

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Nokia has bought up the bits of Symbian it didn’t already own and is chucking the OS into an open-source foundation along with the S60 UI layer, accompanied by Sony Ericsson and DoCoMo, who are throwing in UIQ and MOAP(S) respectively.

[..]

Those members will have to cough up at least $1,500 a year, but that’s chicken feed to companies such as AT&T and Vodafone, which have come on board to endorse the more open Symbian platform.

Good move. Let’s hope it works out. Apple could use the competition.

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“At any instant, KaZaA users are likely to have thousands of sources for these particular songs to choose from and no reason to choose Ms. Thomas’ computer over any other. And while KaZaA users may engage in a prodigious amount of infringing activity, that tells us nothing about the crucial issue in this case: whether this Defendant transmitted any of these 24 songs during the relevant time period. Testimony from an investigator that he or she downloaded a song simply cannot bridge the chasm between “making
available” and “actual dissemination” to anyone other than Plaintiffs’ authorized agents.
Plaintiffs may complain that they cannot overcome this evidentiary hurdle. But Plaintiffs include some of the largest companies in the recording industry, with nearly
limitless resources when compared to Ms. Thomas. It is Plaintiffs who have threatened litigation against over 30,000 people, many whom are unprepared for the unfamiliar (to a layperson) demands of discovery. It is Plaintiffs who have chosen to target noncommercial activities that occur in the privacy of the home, thereby injecting themselves “behind closed doors” where factual investigation can be difficult. Having put themselves in this position, Plaintiffs should not complain that proving their distribution claims poses evidentiary challenges.”

(thanks, dré!)